Joao Barbosa
@jbarbosa.org
INSERM group leader @ Neuromodulation Institute and NeuroSpin (Paris) in computational neuroscience.
How and why are computations enabling cognition distributed across the brain?
Expect neuroscience and ML content.
jbarbosa.org
How and why are computations enabling cognition distributed across the brain?
Expect neuroscience and ML content.
jbarbosa.org
Pinned
Joao Barbosa
@jbarbosa.org
· Feb 2
A good time to repost this banger from 'The Responsibility of Intellectuals' by Noam Chomsky in '67
Vance is absolutely correct: universities are - and must be - the enemy.
This is why the Right is attacking scholarship globally. They want to end the privilege Chomsky's talking about in 67
Vance is absolutely correct: universities are - and must be - the enemy.
This is why the Right is attacking scholarship globally. They want to end the privilege Chomsky's talking about in 67
Reposted by Joao Barbosa
Preparing for our annual family ritual — a blind taste test. This year's category: hummus!
December 25, 2025 at 8:07 PM
Preparing for our annual family ritual — a blind taste test. This year's category: hummus!
Reposted by Joao Barbosa
Of course they are only the starting point. But the argument in the paper depends mainly on rodent brains and there are very significant differences between rodent and primate brains (viz the Glasser and van Essen human map as well as the results from human fMRI).
December 24, 2025 at 4:01 PM
Of course they are only the starting point. But the argument in the paper depends mainly on rodent brains and there are very significant differences between rodent and primate brains (viz the Glasser and van Essen human map as well as the results from human fMRI).
Reposted by Joao Barbosa
New Perspective from myself, Sarah Heilbronner and @myoo.bsky.social . “Rethinking the centrality of brain areas in understanding functional organization” in Nature Neuroscience. 🧵
rdcu.be/eVZ1A
rdcu.be/eVZ1A
Rethinking the centrality of brain areas in understanding functional organization
Nature Neuroscience - Parcellation of the cortex into functionally modular brain areas is foundational to neuroscience. Here, Hayden, Heilbronner and Yoo question the central status of brain areas...
rdcu.be
December 23, 2025 at 1:02 PM
New Perspective from myself, Sarah Heilbronner and @myoo.bsky.social . “Rethinking the centrality of brain areas in understanding functional organization” in Nature Neuroscience. 🧵
rdcu.be/eVZ1A
rdcu.be/eVZ1A
Reposted by Joao Barbosa
“please use our submission form”
the submission form:
the submission form:
a man holding a burning log in an office with a sign on the wall that says ' buzzfeed ' on it
ALT: a man holding a burning log in an office with a sign on the wall that says ' buzzfeed ' on it
media.tenor.com
December 23, 2025 at 8:32 AM
“please use our submission form”
the submission form:
the submission form:
Reposted by Joao Barbosa
Amid the rise of billion-parameter models, I argue that toy models, with just a few neurons, remain essential—and may be all neuroscience needs, writes @marcusghosh.bsky.social.
#neuroskyence
www.thetransmitter.org/theoretical-...
#neuroskyence
www.thetransmitter.org/theoretical-...
Not playing around: Why neuroscience needs toy models
Amid the rise of billion-parameter models, I argue that toy models, with just a few neurons, remain essential—and may be all neuroscience needs.
www.thetransmitter.org
December 22, 2025 at 2:44 PM
Amid the rise of billion-parameter models, I argue that toy models, with just a few neurons, remain essential—and may be all neuroscience needs, writes @marcusghosh.bsky.social.
#neuroskyence
www.thetransmitter.org/theoretical-...
#neuroskyence
www.thetransmitter.org/theoretical-...
Reposted by Joao Barbosa
Happy to share our new paper in @nathumbehav.nature.com: t.co/Ciq7AKvle5. Using 500k+ behavioral trials, we show that #serialdependence deviates from #Bayesian predictions, pointing to a new narrative about how recent experience shapes perception. @aozkirli.bsky.social @achetverikov.bsky.social
December 22, 2025 at 11:09 AM
Happy to share our new paper in @nathumbehav.nature.com: t.co/Ciq7AKvle5. Using 500k+ behavioral trials, we show that #serialdependence deviates from #Bayesian predictions, pointing to a new narrative about how recent experience shapes perception. @aozkirli.bsky.social @achetverikov.bsky.social
Reposted by Joao Barbosa
“‘My most daring idea is to refuse,’ she said to applause.”
Professor Warns That the Wealthy Are Trying to Use AI to Seize Control of Everything
Renowned sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom says that AI is a tool for the rich to cement control over society.
futurism.com
December 21, 2025 at 1:03 PM
“‘My most daring idea is to refuse,’ she said to applause.”
Reposted by Joao Barbosa
Doing a PhD is - at heart - one long discussion with your mentor. The discussion changes over time - with unexpected turns and ups & downs - but through it all is a pair of people discussing a topic endlessly to make sense of it.
PhD students: choose someone you like to talk to!
PhD students: choose someone you like to talk to!
December 19, 2025 at 4:35 PM
Doing a PhD is - at heart - one long discussion with your mentor. The discussion changes over time - with unexpected turns and ups & downs - but through it all is a pair of people discussing a topic endlessly to make sense of it.
PhD students: choose someone you like to talk to!
PhD students: choose someone you like to talk to!
Reposted by Joao Barbosa
🎊📜 NEW PAPER 📜🎊
Can we seriously build synthetic consciousness?
And if so, where do we start?
I’m super excited to present recent publication in Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews where @jaanaru.bsky.social and I confront this challenge head on.
1/n
Can we seriously build synthetic consciousness?
And if so, where do we start?
I’m super excited to present recent publication in Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews where @jaanaru.bsky.social and I confront this challenge head on.
1/n
On biological and artificial consciousness: A case for biological computationalism
The rapid advances in the capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) have galvanised public and scientific debates over whether artificial systems m…
sciencedirect.com
December 18, 2025 at 5:26 PM
🎊📜 NEW PAPER 📜🎊
Can we seriously build synthetic consciousness?
And if so, where do we start?
I’m super excited to present recent publication in Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews where @jaanaru.bsky.social and I confront this challenge head on.
1/n
Can we seriously build synthetic consciousness?
And if so, where do we start?
I’m super excited to present recent publication in Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews where @jaanaru.bsky.social and I confront this challenge head on.
1/n
Reposted by Joao Barbosa
Looks cool, I gotta read.
Aditi Jha found something similar for dale-constrained LDS
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Aditi Jha found something similar for dale-constrained LDS
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
December 19, 2025 at 12:50 AM
Looks cool, I gotta read.
Aditi Jha found something similar for dale-constrained LDS
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Aditi Jha found something similar for dale-constrained LDS
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Reposted by Joao Barbosa
🔬 We're hiring a Junior Group Leader for Data-Driven Digital Twins/System Models in medicine/life sciences at @uni_goettingen! Perfect opportunity for early-career researchers who want to:
- Lead their own research group
- Work at the intersection of AI, simulation, and biomedicine
- Lead their own research group
- Work at the intersection of AI, simulation, and biomedicine
December 19, 2025 at 8:02 AM
🔬 We're hiring a Junior Group Leader for Data-Driven Digital Twins/System Models in medicine/life sciences at @uni_goettingen! Perfect opportunity for early-career researchers who want to:
- Lead their own research group
- Work at the intersection of AI, simulation, and biomedicine
- Lead their own research group
- Work at the intersection of AI, simulation, and biomedicine
One of my favorite papers of 2025:
Neurally constrained RNN obeying Dale's law generalize to unseen optogenetic perturbation much better than those that do not follow dale's
Neurally constrained RNN obeying Dale's law generalize to unseen optogenetic perturbation much better than those that do not follow dale's
Our paper on data constrained RNN that generalize to optogenetic perturbations now citable on eLife:
doi.org/10.7554/eLif...
doi.org/10.7554/eLif...
December 19, 2025 at 12:42 AM
One of my favorite papers of 2025:
Neurally constrained RNN obeying Dale's law generalize to unseen optogenetic perturbation much better than those that do not follow dale's
Neurally constrained RNN obeying Dale's law generalize to unseen optogenetic perturbation much better than those that do not follow dale's
Reposted by Joao Barbosa
Spread the word: I'm looking to hire a postdoc to explore the concept of attention (as studied in psych/neuro, not the transformer mechanism) in large Vision-Language Models. More details here: lindsay-lab.github.io/2025/12/08/p...
#MLSky #neurojobs #compneuro
#MLSky #neurojobs #compneuro
Lindsay Lab - Postdoc Position
Artificial neural networks applied to psychology, neuroscience, and climate change
lindsay-lab.github.io
December 8, 2025 at 11:53 PM
Spread the word: I'm looking to hire a postdoc to explore the concept of attention (as studied in psych/neuro, not the transformer mechanism) in large Vision-Language Models. More details here: lindsay-lab.github.io/2025/12/08/p...
#MLSky #neurojobs #compneuro
#MLSky #neurojobs #compneuro
Reposted by Joao Barbosa
1/X Excited to present this preprint on multi-tasking, with
@david-g-clark.bsky.social and Ashok Litwin-Kumar! Timely too, as “low-D manifold” has been trending again. (If you read thru the end, we escape Flatland and return to the glorious high-D world we deserve.) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
@david-g-clark.bsky.social and Ashok Litwin-Kumar! Timely too, as “low-D manifold” has been trending again. (If you read thru the end, we escape Flatland and return to the glorious high-D world we deserve.) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
A theory of multi-task computation and task selection
Neural activity during the performance of a stereotyped behavioral task is often described as low-dimensional, occupying only a limited region in the space of all firing-rate patterns. This region has...
www.biorxiv.org
December 15, 2025 at 7:41 PM
1/X Excited to present this preprint on multi-tasking, with
@david-g-clark.bsky.social and Ashok Litwin-Kumar! Timely too, as “low-D manifold” has been trending again. (If you read thru the end, we escape Flatland and return to the glorious high-D world we deserve.) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
@david-g-clark.bsky.social and Ashok Litwin-Kumar! Timely too, as “low-D manifold” has been trending again. (If you read thru the end, we escape Flatland and return to the glorious high-D world we deserve.) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Reposted by Joao Barbosa
Bichan Wu (@bichanw.bsky.social) & I wrote a tutorial paper on Reduced Rank Regression (RRR) — the statistical method underlying "communication subspaces" from Semedo et al 2019 — aimed at neuroscientists.
arxiv.org/abs/2512.12467
arxiv.org/abs/2512.12467
Reduced rank regression for neural communication: a tutorial for neuroscientists
Reduced rank regression (RRR) is a statistical method for finding a low-dimensional linear mapping between a set of high-dimensional inputs and outputs. In recent years, RRR has found numerous applica...
arxiv.org
December 17, 2025 at 2:06 AM
Bichan Wu (@bichanw.bsky.social) & I wrote a tutorial paper on Reduced Rank Regression (RRR) — the statistical method underlying "communication subspaces" from Semedo et al 2019 — aimed at neuroscientists.
arxiv.org/abs/2512.12467
arxiv.org/abs/2512.12467
Reposted by Joao Barbosa
🚨new work with the dream team @danakarca.bsky.social @loopyluppi.bsky.social @fatemehhadaeghi.bsky.social @stuartoldham.bsky.social @duncanastle.bsky.social
We use game theory and show the brain is not optimally wired for communication and there’s more to its story:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
We use game theory and show the brain is not optimally wired for communication and there’s more to its story:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
December 15, 2025 at 8:01 AM
🚨new work with the dream team @danakarca.bsky.social @loopyluppi.bsky.social @fatemehhadaeghi.bsky.social @stuartoldham.bsky.social @duncanastle.bsky.social
We use game theory and show the brain is not optimally wired for communication and there’s more to its story:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
We use game theory and show the brain is not optimally wired for communication and there’s more to its story:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Reposted by Joao Barbosa
Very cool talk by Richard Naud (University of Ottawa) @ #MAIN2025
“Modular Organization of Electrical Fluctuations in the Mouse Brain”
@neuronaud.bsky.social
“Modular Organization of Electrical Fluctuations in the Mouse Brain”
@neuronaud.bsky.social
December 13, 2025 at 9:10 PM
Very cool talk by Richard Naud (University of Ottawa) @ #MAIN2025
“Modular Organization of Electrical Fluctuations in the Mouse Brain”
@neuronaud.bsky.social
“Modular Organization of Electrical Fluctuations in the Mouse Brain”
@neuronaud.bsky.social
Intense, nuanced article about Oliver Sacks.
I'm too disappointed that some of his beautiful reports were actually embellished with fiction, but still respect and admire him deeply.
I'm too disappointed that some of his beautiful reports were actually embellished with fiction, but still respect and admire him deeply.
December 13, 2025 at 11:04 AM
Intense, nuanced article about Oliver Sacks.
I'm too disappointed that some of his beautiful reports were actually embellished with fiction, but still respect and admire him deeply.
I'm too disappointed that some of his beautiful reports were actually embellished with fiction, but still respect and admire him deeply.
Reposted by Joao Barbosa
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
damn this is so very clever!
"... we investigated how the brain categorizes stimuli that are not linearly separable in the physical world ... The sensory manifold was ... expanded into a seven-dimensional perceptual manifold..."
damn this is so very clever!
"... we investigated how the brain categorizes stimuli that are not linearly separable in the physical world ... The sensory manifold was ... expanded into a seven-dimensional perceptual manifold..."
From sensory to perceptual manifolds: The twist of neural geometry
The brain uses geometric twists to expand neural dimensionality, thus untangling perception from sensation.
www.science.org
December 13, 2025 at 9:08 AM
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
damn this is so very clever!
"... we investigated how the brain categorizes stimuli that are not linearly separable in the physical world ... The sensory manifold was ... expanded into a seven-dimensional perceptual manifold..."
damn this is so very clever!
"... we investigated how the brain categorizes stimuli that are not linearly separable in the physical world ... The sensory manifold was ... expanded into a seven-dimensional perceptual manifold..."
Reposted by Joao Barbosa
If you do not have to go, you do not go.
December 12, 2025 at 9:33 AM
If you do not have to go, you do not go.
Reposted by Joao Barbosa
I'm starting to think the argument between low vs. high dimensional neural activity literally just comes from plotting the PCs in linear vs. log y-scale
December 12, 2025 at 8:55 AM
I'm starting to think the argument between low vs. high dimensional neural activity literally just comes from plotting the PCs in linear vs. log y-scale
Reposted by Joao Barbosa
I am looking to hire a great postdoc to join our lab in sunny Eugene at the University of Oregon for fun behavioral/fMRI experiments on sensorimotor control in young and older adults. Please share/get in touch if interested! pages.uoregon.edu/mmar/
December 12, 2025 at 4:43 AM
I am looking to hire a great postdoc to join our lab in sunny Eugene at the University of Oregon for fun behavioral/fMRI experiments on sensorimotor control in young and older adults. Please share/get in touch if interested! pages.uoregon.edu/mmar/
Reposted by Joao Barbosa
Dimensionality reduction may be the wrong approach to understanding neural representations. Our new paper shows that across human visual cortex, dimensionality is unbounded and scales with dataset size—we show this across nearly four orders of magnitude. journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...
December 11, 2025 at 3:32 PM
Dimensionality reduction may be the wrong approach to understanding neural representations. Our new paper shows that across human visual cortex, dimensionality is unbounded and scales with dataset size—we show this across nearly four orders of magnitude. journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...
Reposted by Joao Barbosa
The "what else" argument is really something quite bizarre. The brain is a computer, because what else, a magic box?
Like a cat must be a horse, because what else, an elephant?
Like a cat must be a horse, because what else, an elephant?
December 11, 2025 at 12:22 PM
The "what else" argument is really something quite bizarre. The brain is a computer, because what else, a magic box?
Like a cat must be a horse, because what else, an elephant?
Like a cat must be a horse, because what else, an elephant?
Reposted by Joao Barbosa
Alright scientists! It's that time again!
Time to sign up for Skype a Scientist's spring semester.
Want to get matched with a classroom in 2026?
Sign up now 🥰
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
Time to sign up for Skype a Scientist's spring semester.
Want to get matched with a classroom in 2026?
Sign up now 🥰
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
December 10, 2025 at 3:49 PM
Alright scientists! It's that time again!
Time to sign up for Skype a Scientist's spring semester.
Want to get matched with a classroom in 2026?
Sign up now 🥰
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
Time to sign up for Skype a Scientist's spring semester.
Want to get matched with a classroom in 2026?
Sign up now 🥰
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...